The 20 most bike-friendly cities in the world

Every two years, the Copenhagenize Design Company puts out a ranking of the world's 20 most bike-friendly cities, using factors like bicycle culture, infrastructure, perception of safety, politics, and social acceptance to make its decision.

Check out the top 20 cities below.

The top 20 cities for biking

In cities that are clogged with cars, the humble bicycle offers an easy way to get around.

That's true, at least, in cities that also have an extensive bike infrastructure. These are the places that will thrive in the future, as the percentage of the world's population that lives in urban areas quickly climbs.

For 2015, Copenhagenize evaluated 122 cities — every city with a regional population of more than 600,000 people — and winnowed them down to the top 20. Europe takes up many of the top spots on the list, as it has in the past, while the U.S. is mostly absent, with the exception of Minnesota. South America has one city at the top (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Asia has slipped out of the top 20 altogether, where it once held down two spots.

20. Montreal, Canada

North America gets a spot in the top 20 with Montreal, which has a respectable bike infrastructure that's heavily used by cyclists, as well as a top bike share system. But the city has lots of work to do, including better winter maintenance, and creating a broad vision for the future of cycling in the city, according to Copenhagenize.

19. Hamburg, Germany

A significant number of people in Hamburg use biking as their primary form of transportation, but Copenhagenize rips on the city for its "status quo of weird infrastructure that alternates between road and sidewalk without any logic." By 2030, the city hopes to have bikes make up 25% of all transportation used.